An explicit form for Kerov’s character polynomials

By I. P. Goulden and A. Rattan

Abstract

Abstract. Kerov considered the normalized characters of irreducible representations of the symmetric group, evaluated on a cycle, as a polynomial in free cumulants. Biane has proved that this polynomial has integer coefficients, and made various conjectures. Recently, ´ Sniady has proved Biane’s conjectured explicit form for the first family of nontrivial terms in this polynomial. In this paper, we give an explicit expression for all terms in Kerov’s character polynomials. Our method is through Lagrange inversion. 1